Why You Should Be Using Animation to Engage Users

Web design is a constantly evolving field as new trends and methods of repackaging and presenting visuals to consumers comes to light. It is a user experience designer’s duty to create the best possible experience for site visitors, all the while still remaining innovative and on-trend. As of late 2017, and now moving into 2018, UX designers are adopting animation into designs not only as a visual aid, but for their usability. In other words, animation is a fantastic way to enhance your user experience.

1. To demonstrate your company’s craftsmanship and ability to pay attention to detail

When it comes to animation, it’s about the little things. A great way of incorporating animation would be to help distract users from page loading times. As we have already touched on in our previous blog post on “Page Loading Times” (insert link to post), even a one second delay in page load speed can equate to a 7% conversion loss.

2. Better deliver a message in a way that is pleasing to the eye

Visuals are a great way of easily communicating and delivering a message to an audience that needs an extra push to engage. An animation can also help develop your very own signature brand animation to stand out amongst your competitors. Examples of this are: interactive animations, hover animations, and storytelling or 360 degree animations.

3. Engage users to take further steps by drawing their eye and capturing their attention

The use of animation on your website can help direct the user’s eye to where you would like their attention to be focused on. As a human’s eye is naturally attracted to motion, incorporating animation into your web design is a great way to achieve further engagement.

4. Keep users from getting lost in Navigation

For some websites, it can be easy for users to get confused or lost when looking or browsing for information. Incorporating animations such as an animated page scroller can help simplify the user experience greatly and can even be used to make page transitions more obvious.

5. Use animation to confirm purchases, clicks, and sign ups for users clearly

Sometimes it can be unclear to users whether or not their click has actually registered. To avoid users slowing down processing time by clicking repeatedly, incorporate animation in the form of different colours and more to prevent this from happening.

Animation in web design can be a breath of fresh air when used correctly, however, if overused or done wrong animation has the potential to ruin user experience entirely. When considering adopting animation into your web design for ecommerce, be confident in the style you are looking to accomplish but also the purpose of using animation in the first place.

Webilize is a leading web development company for small to medium sized businesses and Government organizations. Our team of UX and UI designers are highly experienced in their ability to create high performing, secure, and scalable responsive websites customizable to your needs. Get in touch with us today to take the first step towards creating your own.